David Thain, a few hours later, lounged in a basket chair in the one corner of his lawn from which he could catch, through the hedge of yew trees, a furtive glimpse of Mandeleys. By his side stood a small coffee equipage and an unopened box of cigars; in the distance was the vanishing figure of the quiet-mannered and very excellent butler with whom a famous registry office had endowed his household. It was an hour of supreme ease. An unusually warm day was succeeded by an evening from which only the warmth of the sun had departed, an evening full of scents from flowers and shrubs alike, an evening during which the thrushes prolonged their music until, from somewhere in the distant groves at the back of the house, a nightingale commenced, like the tuning up of an orchestra, to make faint but sweet essays at continued song. It was as light as day but there were stars already in the sky, and a pale, colourless moon was there, waiting for the slowly moving mantle of twilight. David Thain was alone with his thoughts.
They had started somewhere in the background, in the first throb and excitement of life, in the moment when his lips had framed that horrible oath which held him now in its meshes. Then had come the real struggle, years of brilliant successes, the final coup, the stepping in a single day on to one of those pedestals which a great republic keeps for her most worshipped sons. Always it seemed to him that there was that old man in the background, waiting. At last had come the question. Yes, he was ready. He had come to England a little protesting, a little incredulous, always believing that those fierce fires which had burned for so long in the grey-haired, patient old man would have burned themselves out, or would become softened by sentimental associations as soon as he set foot in his native place. David's awakening was complete and disconcerting. The fury of Richard Vont showed no signs of abatement. He found himself committed already to one loathsome enterprise—and there was the future. He looked down gloomily at the magnificent pile below, with its many chimneys, its stretching front and far-reaching wings, and some echo of the bitterness which raged in the old man who sat and watched at its gates, found an echo in his own heart. He remembered the amusement with which that subtle but absolutely natural air of superiority, on the part of father and daughter alike, had first imbued him. Their very kindness, the frank efforts of the Marquis, as well as of Lady Letitia, to lead him into some channel of conversation in which he could easily express himself was the kindness of those belonging to another world and fearing lest the consciousness of it might depress their visitor. And with his resentment was mingled another feeling; not exactly acquiescence—his American education had been too strong for that—but admiration for those inherent gifts which seemed to bring with them a certain grace, carried into even the smaller matters of life. Perhaps he exaggerated to himself their importance as he sat there in the soft gathering twilight, poured out his neglected coffee and still played with his unlighted cigar. The rooks had ceased to caw above his head. Some of the peace of night was stealing down upon the land. In the windows of Mandeleys little pinpricks of light were beginning to show.
The iron hand-gate which led from the park into his domain was suddenly opened and closed. The way led through a grove of trees and through another gate into the garden. He turned his head and watched the spot where the figure of his visitor must appear. It was curious that from the first, although his common sense should have told him how impossible such a thing was, he had an intuitive presentiment as to who this visitor might be. He laid down the unlighted cigar upon his table and leaned a little forward in his chair. First he heard footsteps falling softly upon a carpet of pine needles and yielding turf, slowly too, as though the movements of their owner were in a sense reluctant. And then a slim, tall figure in white—a familiar figure! He was up in a moment, striding forwards. She had already passed through the gate, however, and was moving towards him across the lawn.
"Lady Letitia!" he exclaimed.
She nodded.
"Please don't look as though I'd done anything so terribly unusual," she begged. "What a pleasant spot you have chosen for your coffee!"
David's new treasure proved fully equal to the occasion. From some unseen point of vantage he seemed to have foretold the coming of this visitor, and prepared to minister to her entertainment. Lady Letitia sank into her chair and praised the coffee.
"So much better than the stuff we have been trying to drink," she told David. "I must bring dad round one evening. He loves good coffee. How beautiful your trees are!"
"Your trees," he reminded her.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"It seems ages since I was here," she remarked. "Sylvia was away when we were down last, and dad and Colonel Laycey were annoyed with one another about some repairs. You don't want any repairs, do you, Mr. Thain?"
"I have arranged to do whatever is necessary myself," David told her, "in consideration of a somewhat reduced rent."
"I am glad you consider it reduced!" Letitia observed. "Of course, you think I am mad to come and see you like this, don't you?" she added a little aggressively.
"Not in the least," he replied. "I should not have ventured to have expected such a visit, but now that you are here it seems quite natural."
"After all, why isn't it?" she agreed. "I walked round the garden once, thinking about a certain matter in which you are concerned, and then I walked in the park, and it occurred to me that you would probably be sitting out here, only a few hundred yards away, just as you are doing, and that you could, if you would, set my mind at rest."
"If I can do that," he said, "I am very glad that you came."
"I am going to unburden my mind, then," she continued. "It is about those shares you sold father, Mr. Thain."
His manner seemed, to her quick apprehension, instantly to stiffen. Nevertheless, he was expectant. He was willing to go through a good deal if only he could hear her voice for once falter, if even her tone would lose its half-wearied, half-insolent note, if she would raise her eyes and speak to him as woman to man.
"The Pluto Oil shares," he murmured. "Well?"
"Of course, father hadn't the least right to buy them," she went on, "because we haven't a penny in the world, and he couldn't possibly pay for them unless they fetched as much, when the payment fell due, as he gave for them. I am rather stupid at these things, Mr. Thain, but you understand?"
"Perfectly!"
Her long fingers stole into the cigarette box. She accepted a light from him and leaned back once more in her chair.
"Father," she proceeded, "has the most implicit faith in everybody. The fact that you are an American millionaire was ample proof to him that anything in the way of shares you possessed must be worth a great deal more than their face value. I do not know what led to his buying them—you probably do. Did he asked for any assurances as to their intrinsic value?"
"I warned him," David said, "that they were entirely a speculation. He asked my advice as to some way of raising a large sum of money, much larger than he could hope to gain by any ordinary enterprise. I presumed that he was willing to speculate and I suggested these shares. They certainly are as speculative as any man could desire."
"Are they worth any more now than when father bought them?" she enquired.
"To the best of my belief they have not moved," he replied. "As a matter of fact, they have not yet had a chance to prove themselves."
"They are still worth a dollar a share, then?"
"They are worth a dollar a share as much as they were when your father bought them."
She turned her head and looked at him.
"My father," she said, "declines to ask you any questions. He would consider it in bad taste to suggest for a moment that he felt any uneasiness with regard to the necessary payment for them. He is none the less, however, worried. He was foolish enough to tell his lawyers about them, and lawyers, I am afraid, have very little faith in him as a business man. The result of the enquiries they made was most depressing."
"It probably would be," David assented.
"Forty thousand pounds' worth of shares," Letitia continued, "which are worth as much now as when my father bought them, are, I suppose, nothing to you. I wondered whether you would object to have them back again? I think that it would relieve my father's mind."
Thain was silent for a moment. He had lit a cigar now and was smoking steadily.
"You have not much idea of business, Lady Letitia," he remarked.
"Business?" she repeated, with a note of surprise in her tone. "How should I have? There are certain matters of common sense and of honour which I suppose are common to every one of reasonable intelligence. There did not seem to me to be any principle of business involved in this."
"Supposing," David said, "the shares had risen and were worth two dollars to-day, you would not in that case, I presume, have honoured me with this visit?"
"Certainly not," she replied.
"I did not sell those shares to your father as an act of philanthropy," he continued. "He asked me to show him a speculation, and I showed him this. Those shares, so far as I know, are as likely to be worth five times their value next week, or nothing at all. I am a very large holder, and it seemed to me that it would be a reasonable act of prudence to sell a few of them at a price which showed me a small margin of profit."
"Profit?" she repeated wonderingly. "Are you in need of profit?"
"It is the poison of wealth," he observed. "One is always trying to add to what one has."
She turned her head and looked at him intently. For a moment she was almost startled. There was something unreal in the sound of his words. Something that was almost a foreboding chilled her.
"Mr. Thain," she said calmly.
"Yes?"
"Had you any reason—any special reason, I mean—for selling those shares to my father?"
His face was inscrutable.
"What reason should I have, Lady Letitia?"
"I can't imagine any," she replied, "and yet—for a moment I thought that you were talking artificially. I probably did you an injustice. I am sorry."
David's teeth came together. There was lightning in his eyes as he glanced down through the trees towards Vont's little cottage.
"Don't apologise too soon, Lady Letitia," he warned her.
She raised her eyebrows.
"I am not accustomed to think the worst of people," she said. "I can scarcely picture to myself any person, already inordinately wealthy, singling out my father as a victim for his further cupidity. Let me return to the question which I have already asked you. Would you care, without letting my father know of this visit and my request, to return his cheque or promissory note, or whatever it was, in exchange for these shares?"
"I am not even sure, Lady Letitia," he reminded her, after a moment's pause, "that your father wishes this."
"You can, I think, take my word that it would be a relief to him," she asserted.
He pondered for a few moments. The light through the trees seemed to be burning brighter in Vont's sitting room.
"I will be frank with you, Lady Letitia," he said. "There has been no increase in the value of these shares. The news which I have expected concerning them has not arrived. The transaction, therefore, is one which at the present moment would probably entail a loss. Do you wish me to make your father a present of twenty or thirty thousand pounds?"
She rose deliberately to her feet and shook the few grains of cigarette ash from her dress. The cigarette itself she threw into a laurel bush.
"I understand," she remarked, "what you implied when you said that women did not understand business."
Her tone was unhurried, her manner expressed no indignation. Yet as she strolled towards the gate, David felt the colour drained from his cheeks, felt the wicker sides of his chair crash in the grip of his fingers. He rose and hurried after her.
"Lady Letitia," he began impulsively—
She turned upon him as though surprised.
"Pray do not trouble to escort me home," she begged.
"It isn't that," he went on, falling into step by her side. "You make me feel like a thief."
"Are you not a thief?" she asked. "I have been told that nearly all very rich men are thieves. I begin to understand that it may be so."
"It is possible to juggle with money honestly," he assured her.
"It is also possible, I suppose," she observed, with faint sarcasm, "to lower the standard of honesty. Thank you," she added, as she passed through the second gate, "you perhaps did not understand me. I should prefer to return alone."
"I am going your way," he insisted desperately.
"My way?" she repeated. "But there is nowhere to go to, unless you are proposing to honour us with a call at Mandeleys."
"I am going in to see old Richard Vont," he said.
She laughed in surprised fashion.
"What, the old man who sits and curses us! Is he a friend of yours?"
"He was on the steamer, coming home," David reminded her. "I told you so before. I take an interest in him."
His point now was momentarily gained, and he walked unhindered by her side. The soft twilight had fallen around them, little wreaths of mist were floating across the meadows, the birds were all silent. The pathway led through another narrow grove of trees. As they neared the gate, Letitia hesitated.
"I think it is just as near across the meadow," she said.
He held open the gate for her.
"You had better stay on the path," he advised. "The grass is wet and your shoes are thin."
She looked into his face, still hesitating. Then she swiftly dropped her eyes. The man must be mad! Nevertheless, she seemed for a moment to lose her will. The gate had fastened behind them with a sharp click. They were in the grove. The way was very narrow and the fir trees almost black. There was only a glimpse of deep blue sky to be seen ahead and in front. The pigeons rustled their wings, and a great owl lumbered across the way. Something happened to Letitia then which had never happened before. She felt both her hands gripped by a man's, felt herself powerless in his grasp.
"Lady Letitia," he exclaimed feverishly, "don't think I'm a fool! I'll not ask for what you haven't got to give—me. You shall have your father's note—you shall have—for him—what will make him free, if you'll only treat me like a human being—if you'll be—kind—a little kinder."
Her eyes flashed at him through the darkness, yet he could see that one thing at least he had achieved. Her bosom was rising and falling quickly, her voice shook as she answered him. For the first time he had penetrated that intolerable reserve.
"Are you mad?" she cried. "Are you trying to buy me?"
"How else should I win even a kind glance?" he answered bitterly.
"You mistake me for a railroad system," she mocked.
"I have never mistaken you for anything but a woman," was the vibrating reply. "The only trouble is that to me you always posture as something else."
His hands were burning upon her wrists, but she showed no resentment.
"Is this the way," she asked, "that Americans woo? Do they imprison the lady of their choice in some retired spot and make a cash offer for their affections? You are at least original, Mr. Thain!"
"If I can't bring myself to ask you in plain words what I am craving for," he answered hoarsely, "you can guess why. I know very well that there is only one thing about me that counts in your eyes. I know that I should be only an appendage to the money that would make your father happy and Mandeleys free. And yet I don't care. I want you—you first, and then yourself."
"You have some faith, then, in your eligibility—and your methods of persuasion?" she observed.
"Haven't I reason?" he retorted. "You people here are all filled up with rotten, time-exploded notions, bound with silken bonds, worshippers of false gods. You don't see the truth—you don't know it. I am not sure that I blame you, for it's a beautiful slavery, and but for the ugly realities of life you'd prosper in it and have children just as wonderful and just as ignorant. But, you see, the times are changing. I am one of the signs of them."
"If this were an impersonal discussion," Letitia began, struggling to compose her voice—
"But it isn't," he broke in. "I am speaking of you and of me, and no one else. I'm fool enough to love you, to be mad about you! Fool enough to make you an offer of which any man with a grain of self-respect should be ashamed."
"I quite agree with you," she said smoothly. "Perhaps it will end this very interesting little episode if I tell you that I am engaged to marry Lord Charles Grantham, and that he is coming down to-morrow."
He released her hands—flung them from him almost.
"Is this the truth?" he demanded.
She laughed lightly.
"Why on earth," she asked, "should I take the trouble to tell you anything else?"
He pointed to the path.
"Get on," he ordered.
She found herself obeying him—without resentment, even. When they reached the gate that led into the park, he held it open and remained. She hesitated for a moment.
"You are going to leave me to brave the perils of the rest of the journey alone?" she asked.
He made no answer. She lifted her skirts a little, for the dew was becoming heavier, and made her graceful way down the slope and across the bridge to the postern gate. Arrived there, she looked round. David Thain had vanished back into the grove.
Letitia made her way into her own room and closed the door. She lit both of the candles upon her dressing table, pulled back the lace of her sleeves and looked at her wrists. There were two red marks there, red marks which, as she stared at them, seemed suddenly again to feel the iron pressure. She stared at them, half in surprise, without anger and yet with a curious emotion. Suddenly she found that she was trembling, obsessed with a strange yet irresistible impulse. She bent down and lightly kissed the flaming marks. Then she blew out the candles, threw herself into the easy-chair which, earlier in the day, she had drawn up to the window, and looked steadily back into the park now fast becoming a phantasy of shadowland.
The Marquis, with several account books and Mr. Merridrew, who had ridden over from his office on a motor-bicycle, had settled down to a laborious evening. The former, for no particular reason, was enjoying a slight relapse into his customary optimism.
"I am not without expectation," the Marquis commenced by explaining to his agent, "that at the end of the next two months I may find myself in possession of a large sum of money. Under those circumstances, it will not be a purposeless proceeding to work out what is really required in the way of repairs on the various farms. It will be a great pleasure for me to meet my tenants in any way possible. On the whole, I consider that they have been very reasonable and loyal."
Mr. Merridrew agreed with his lordship, agreed with him fervently.
"Some of them," he confessed, "have been very troublesome. A few of them have been driven to make some slight repairs themselves, but on the whole, your lordship, it would be a great relief if one were able to assist them so far as regards positive dilapidations."
The Marquis dipped his pen in the ink and settled down to his task. At that moment, however, Gossett knocked at the door, opened it and advanced towards his master with a card upon a salver.
"The gentleman is staying at Fakenham, I believe, sir, and has motored over."
The Marquis lifted the card. "Mr. James Borden" at first conveyed nothing to him. Then he felt a sudden stab of memory.
"The gentleman wishes to see me?" he enquired.
"He begs to be allowed a short interview with your lordship," Gossett replied.
"You can show him into the library," was the brief direction. "Mr. Merridrew," he added, turning to the agent, "you can proceed with the abstract without me. I shall return in time to go through the totals and learn the family records of the various tenants—I refer, of course, to those with which I am not acquainted."
Mr. Merridrew was quite sure that he could manage alone and settled down to his task. The Marquis presently left him and crossed the great hall, one of the wonders of Mandeleys, the walls of which were still hung with faded reproductions, in ornate tapestry, of mediaeval incidents. From somewhere amongst the shadows came Gossett, who gravely took up his stand outside the library. As though with some curious prescience of the fact that this was an unwelcome visitor, his bow, as he threw open the door, was lower even than usual.
"Shall I light the lamp, your lordship?" he asked.
The Marquis glanced towards the oriel windows, through which the light came scantily, and at the figure of James Borden, advancing now from somewhere in the dim recesses of the room—an apartment which remained marvellously little altered since the days when it had contained the laboriously collected books of a Franciscan order of Monks.
"Perhaps it would be as well, Gossett," his master assented. "You wish to see me?" he added, turning towards his visitor.
James Borden had come posthaste from London, acting upon an impulse which had swept him off his feet. All the way down he had been the prey to turbulent thoughts. A hundred different ways of conducting this interview had presented themselves before him with such facility that he had come to look upon it as one of the easiest things on earth. Yet now the moment had arrived he was conscious of an unexpected embarrassment. The strange tranquillity of the house and this stately apartment, the personality of the Marquis himself—serene, slightly curious, yet with that indefinable air of good-breeding which magnifies the obligations of a host—had a paralysing effect upon him. He was tongue-tied, uncertain of himself. All the many openings which had come to him so readily faded away.
"My name is Borden," he announced. "I have come here, hoping for a short conversation with you."
The Marquis made no immediate reply. He watched the lighting of a huge lamp which Gossett silently placed in the middle of an ebony black writing table, to the side of which he had already drawn up two high-backed chairs.
"Is there anything else your lordship desires?" the man asked.
"Not at present, Gossett. I will ring."
The Marquis pointed towards one of the chairs, and seated himself in the other.
"I shall be very glad to hear of your business with me, Mr. Borden," he said courteously.
His visitor had lost none of his embarrassment. The Marquis, in his old-fashioned dinner clothes, his black stock, the fob which hung from his waistcoat, his finely chiselled features, and that mysterious air of being entirely in touch with his surroundings, had him at a disadvantage from the first. Borden was wearing the somewhat shabby blue serge suit in which he had travelled all day, and which he had neglected to brush. He had been too much in earnest about his mission to do more than make the most hasty toilet at the hotel. The high-backed chair, which suited the Marquis so well, was an unfamiliar article of furniture to him, and he sat upon it stiffly and without ease. Nevertheless, he reminded himself that he was there—he must say what he had come to say.
"I am venturing to address you, Lord Mandeleys," he began, "upon a personal subject."
The Marquis raised his eyebrows gently. It was perhaps a suggestion of surprise that a personal subject should exist, lending itself to discussion between him and this visitor.
"And before I go any further," the latter continued, "I want to make it clear that I am here at my own initiative only—that the other person interested is entirely ignorant of my visit."
Mr. Borden paused, and the Marquis made no sign whatever. He was sitting quite upright in his chair, the fingers of his right hand toying lazily with an ancient paper knife, fashioned of yellow ivory.
"Nevertheless," the speaker went on, "I wish to tell you that my visit is a sequel to a conversation which I had last night with Miss Marcia Hannaway, a conversation during which I asked her, not for the first time, to be my wife."
The Marquis's fingers ceased to trifle with the paper knife. Otherwise, not a muscle of his body or a single twitch of the features betrayed any emotion. Nevertheless, his visitor realised for the first time that all his life he had had a wrong conception of this man. He knew quite well that he had altogether underrated the difficulties of his task.
"I am taking it for granted," he proceeded, "that you are broad-minded enough, Lord Mandeleys, to admit that we can discuss this, or any other matter, on terms of equality. I am unknown to you. My father was a Dean of Peterborough; I was myself at Harrow and Magdalen."
The Marquis's fingers stretched out once more towards the paper knife.
"You mentioned, I believe," he said, "the name of a lady with whom I am acquainted."
"I am coming to that," was the eager reply. "I only wanted to have it understood that this was a matter which we could discuss as equals, as man to man."
"I am so far from agreeing with you," the Marquis declared calmly, "that I prefer to choose my own companions in any discussion, and my own subjects. It happens that you are a stranger to me."
Borden checked a hasty retort, which he realised at once would have placed him at a further disadvantage.
"Lord Mandeleys," he said, "I was at first Miss Hannaway's publisher. I have become her friend. I desire to become her husband. Her whole story is known to me, even from the day when you brought her away from the Vont cottage and chose her for your companion. I have watched the slow development of her brain, I know how much she has benefited intellectually by the forced seclusion entailed upon her by the conditions of your friendship. I realise, however, that the time has come when in justice to her gifts, which have not yet reached fruition, it is necessary that she should come into closer personal contact with the world of which she knows so little. She can attain that position by becoming my wife."
"Really!" his listener murmured, with a faint note of unruffled surprise in his tone.
Borden set his teeth. The task which had seemed to him so easy was presenting now a very different appearance. Nevertheless, he kept an iron restraint upon himself.
"I do not wish to weary you," he went on, "by making a long story of this. I am forty-one years old and unmarried. Marcia Hannaway is the first woman whom I have wished to make my wife, and I wish it because I—care for her. I have been her suitor for nine years. During all that time she has given me no word of encouragement. I have never once, until these last few days, been permitted to dine alone with her, nor been allowed even the privilege of visiting her at her home. The restrictions upon our intercourse have been, I presume, in obedience to your wishes, or to Marcia's interpretation of them."
"If we could come," the Marquis said gently, "to the reason for this visit—"
The words supplied the sting that Borden needed.
"I believe," he declared, "that Marcia Hannaway in her heart wishes to marry me. I believe that she cares enough to marry me. Only a short time ago she admitted it, and within twelve hours I received a note, retracting all that she had promised."
There was a deep silence throughout the great room. The faces of the two men—a little closer now, for Borden had moved his chair—were both under the little circle of lamplight. For a single second something had disturbed the imperturbability of the Marquis's countenance—it seemed, indeed, as though some strange finger had humanised it, had softened the eyes and drawn apart the lips. Then the moment passed.
"Are we nearing the end of this discussion, Mr. Borden?"
"Every word brings us nearer the end," was the ready reply. "I am going to tell you the truth as I feel it in my heart. Marcia would be at her best in the life to which I should bring her. Mentally, spiritually and humanly, as my wife she would be happier. She has refused me out of loyalty to you."
"Are you suggesting," the Marquis enquired, "that I should intervene in favour of your suit?"
Borden struck the table with the flat of his hand.
"Damn it," he exclaimed, "can't you talk of this like a man! Don't you care enough for Marcia to think a little of her happiness? I want you to let her go—to let her believe, whether it is the truth or not, that she is not, as she seems to think, necessary to your life. Come! Life has its sacrifices as well as its compensations. You've had the best part of a wonderful woman's life. I am not saying a word about the conditions which exist between you. I don't presume. If I did, I should have to remember that Marcia speaks always of your treatment of her with tears of gratitude in her eyes. But your time has come. Marcia has many years to live. There is something grown up within her which you have nothing to do with—a little flame of genius which burns there all the time, which at this very moment would be a furnace but for the fact of the unnatural life she is forced to lead as your—companion. Now you ask what I've come for, and you know. I want you to forget yourself and to think of the woman who has been your faithful and sympathetic companion for all these years. She hasn't come to her own yet. She can't with you. She can with me. Write and thank her for what she has given you, and tell her that for the future she is free. She can make her choice then, unfettered by these infernal bonds which you have laid around her."
The Marquis turned the lamp a little lower with steady fingers. The necessity for his action was not altogether apparent.
"You suggest, Mr. Borden, if I understand you rightly," he said, "that I am now too old and too unintelligent to afford Marcia the stimulating companionship which her gifts deserve?"
"There can't be a great sympathy between you," the other declared, "and, to be brutal, the place in life which she deserves, and to which she aspires, is not open to her under present conditions."
"You allude, I presume," the Marquis said, "to the absence of any legal tie between Miss Hannaway and myself?"
"I do," Borden assented. "The world is a broad-minded place enough, but there are differences and backwaters—I am not here to explain them to you. I don't need to. Marcia Hannaway, married to her publisher, going where she will, thinking how she will, meeting whom she will, would be a different person to Miss Marcia Hannaway, living in isolation in Battersea, with nothing warm nor human in her life except—"
"Precisely," the Marquis interrupted, with a little gesture which might have concealed—anything. "I am beginning to grasp your point of view, Mr. Borden."
"And your answer?"
"I have no answer to give you, sir. You have made certain suggestions, which I may or may not be prepared to accept. In any case, matters of so much importance scarcely lend themselves to decisions between strangers. I shall probably allude to what you have said when I see or write Miss Hannaway."
"You've nothing more to say to me about it, then?" Borden persisted, a little wistfully.
"Nothing whatever! You may possibly consider my attitude selfish," the Marquis added, "but I find myself wholly indifferent to your interests in this matter."
"I should be able to reconcile myself even to that," was the grim reply, "if I have been able to penetrate for a single moment that accursed selfishness of yours—if I have been able to make you think, for however short a time, of Marcia's future instead of your own."
The Marquis rose without haste from his place, and rang the bell.
"You will permit me, Mr. Borden," he invited, "to offer you some refreshments?"
"Thank you, I desire nothing."
The Marquis pointed to the door, by which Gossett was standing.
"That, then, I think, concludes our interview," he said, with icy courtesy.
Mr. Borden walked the full length of the very long apartment, suffered himself to be respectfully conducted across the great hall, out on to the flags and into the motor-car which he had hired in Fakenham. It was not until he was on his way through the park that he opened his lips and found them attuned to blasphemy. At the top of the gentle slope, however, where the car was brought to a standstill while the driver opened the iron gate, he turned back and looked at Mandeleys, looked at its time-worn turrets, its mullioned windows, the Norman chapel, the ruined cloisters, the ivy-covered west wing, the beautiful Elizabethan chimneys. A strange, heterogeneous mass of architecture, yet magnificent, in its way impressive, almost inspiring. He looked at the little cottage almost at its gates, from which a thin, spiral column of smoke was ascending. Perhaps in those few seconds, and with the memory of that interview still rankling, he felt a glimmering of real understanding. Something which had always been incomprehensible to him in Marcia's story stood more or less revealed.
The Marquis, if he had been a keen physiognomist, might perhaps have read all that he had come to London to know in Marcia's expression as he made his unexpected entrance into her sitting room on the following day. She was seated at her desk, with a great pile of red roses on one side of her, and a secretary, to whom she was dictating, on the other. She swung round in her chair and for a moment was speechless. She looked at her visitor incredulously, a little helplessly, with some traces of an emotion which puzzled him. Her greeting, however, was hearty enough. She sprang to her feet and held out both her hands.
"My dear man, how unlike you! Really, I think that I like surprises. Give me both your hands—so! Let me look at you."
"I should have warned you of my coming," he said, raising the ink-stained fingers which he was clasping to his lips, "but to tell you the truth it was a caprice."
"I thought you were in the country, at Mandeleys!" she exclaimed.
"I was," he replied. "I have motored up from there this morning. I came to see you."
She dismissed her secretary, gazed at herself in the glass and made a grimace.
"And a nice sight I look! Never mind. Fancy motoring up from Mandeleys! What time did you start?"
"At six o'clock," he answered, with a little smile. "It was somewhat before my regular hour for rising. If you have no other arrangements, I should be glad if you would take luncheon with me."
"Bless the man, of course I will!" she assented, passing her arm through his and leading him to a chair. "You are not looking quite so well as you ought to after a breath of country air."
"I am passing through a time of some anxiety," he acknowledged.
She remained on the side of his chair, still holding his arm. The Marquis sank back with a little air of relief. There seemed to be something different, something warmer in the world. He was moved by a rare and unaccountable impulse—he drew her towards him and kissed her lips.
"I had a birthday last week," he said, with a very slight smile. "I think that it affected me. One begins to wonder after one has passed middle age, not what there is to look forward to, but how much it is worth while enduring."
"Of course," she declared, with a grimace, "you've been diving into musty old volumes at Mandeleys and reading the mutterings of one of those primitive philosophers who growled at life from a cave."
"I have found myself a little lonely at Mandeleys," he confessed.
"But this visit to London," she persisted. "Is it business? Is there anything wrong?"
"I came to see you."
"My head is going round," she declared. "This is Wednesday. Besides, I thought you were going to stay away until I wrote you—not that I wanted you to."
"I changed my mind," he told her, "in consequence of a visit which I received yesterday from a Mr. James Borden."
She gave vent to an exclamation of dismay.
"You mean that Jimmy has been down to see you?"
"If Jimmy and Mr. James Borden are identical," the Marquis replied, a little stiffly, "he undoubtedly has."
She looked at him helplessly.
"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "how could he be so foolish!"
"He wanted, it seems," the Marquis continued, "to have what he called a man-to-man talk. I am not the sort of person, as you know, Marcia, who appreciates man-to-man talks with strangers. I listened to all that he had to say, and because I gathered that he was your friend, I was polite to him. That is all. He gave me to understand that he was your suitor."
"He'd no right to tell you anything of the sort," she declared, "but in a sense I suppose it is true. He wants me to marry him. It's most fearfully unsettling. But that he should come to you! I wish he hadn't, Reginald."
"It appeared to me to be a quixotic action," the Marquis assented. "However, indirectly it has been conducive of good—it has brought me a great pleasure. I have missed you very much, Marcia. I am very happy to be here again, for however short a time."
"You are going back, then, to Mandeleys?"
"When we part, directly after luncheon. I have guests arriving there to-night—my sister and Grantham, and I believe some others. But after my talk with Borden, or rather his talk to me, I felt that I must see you."
"Well, I've missed you," she confessed frankly. "I seem to have had lots to do, and I have been going to the theatres, and I have quite made up my mind to write a play. But I have missed you.—Shall I go and put on my hat?"
"If you will," he answered. "We can talk in the car and at luncheon."
The Marquis watched her cross the room and sighed. At thirty-nine, he thought, she was wonderfully young. Her figure was a little more mature, but in all other respects she seemed only to have found poise and assurance with the passing years. He leaned back in his chair almost with a sense of luxury. He was back again in the atmosphere which had kept him young, the atmosphere which unconsciously had hung around him and kept him warm and contented—kept him, too, from looking over the edge into strange places. The room was deliciously feminine, notwithstanding a certain fascinating disorder. There were magazines, Reviews and illustrated papers everywhere in evidence, an open box of cigarettes upon the chimneypiece, an armful of flowers thrown loose upon the table, as well as the roses upon her desk. One of her gloves lay upon a chair by the side of a pile of proofs. It seemed to him that there were some new photographs on the mantelpiece, but his own, in the uniform of his county yeomanry, still occupied the central position. There were songs upon the piano; on the sideboard a silver cocktail shaker, and, as he noticed with a little pang, two glasses. Nevertheless, he sat there waiting in great content until Marcia came in, dressed for the street. She was followed by a servant with some ice upon a tray, and bottles.
"Now for my new vice," she exclaimed gaily, taking up the cocktail shaker and half filling it with ice. "You are not going to be obstinate, are you?"
"I shall take anything you may give me, with great pleasure," he assured her, a little stiffly.
She saw him looking at the second glass, and laughed.
"It is Phyllis Grant who is responsible for this," she explained. "She lives in the next flat, you know, and she comes in most days, either before luncheon or before dinner, for an apéritif and a cigarette."
The Marquis's face cleared. He drank his cocktail and pronounced it delicious. On the threshold he paused and looked back.
"I like your little room, Marcia," he said. "I find it a strange thing to confess, but there is nowhere else in the world where I feel quite as much at home, quite as contented, as I do here."
She seemed almost startled, for a moment unresponsive. Such a speech was so unlike him that it seemed impossible that he could be in earnest. She walked down the stairs by his side with a new gravity in her face. Perhaps he noticed it. At any rate, as soon as they were seated in the car he began to talk to her.
"The object of Mr. Borden's visit to me, I gathered, was to impress upon me the fact that by marrying him you would gain many advantages from which you are at present debarred. I naturally made no comment, nor did I argue the matter with him. I have come to you."
She sat silent in her corner. Her eyes were fixed upon a nursemaid, with two or three young children, passing by. Suddenly she touched her companion on the arm and pointed to them.
"There is that, you know," she faltered.
The Marquis nodded.
"My great fear," he continued, "is that sometimes I am too much inclined to treat you as a contemporary, and to forget that you have never known those things which are a part of every woman's life. I must give Mr. Borden the credit for having had the good taste not to mention them."
"Oh, Jimmy isn't a cad," she answered, "but, without mentioning them, I cannot understand what he came to you for. As regards the other things you have spoken of, I don't care a rap about them, in fact I love my independence. I go where I choose, I have found no one indisposed to make my acquaintance, and the more I see of life—such life as comes to me—the more I love it. When Jim—Mr. Borden—uses such arguments, he bores me. They are directly against him instead of for him. If I were Mrs. James Borden, people would leave cards upon me and I should have to eat dinners with fellow-publishers' wives, and exchange calls, and waste many hours of my life in all the tomfoolery of middle-class respectable living. It doesn't appeal to me, Reginald. He is an idiot not to realise it."
"What does appeal to you, then?" he asked.
"That," she answered, moving her head backwards.
They crossed Battersea Bridge in silence.
"It's such a silly, ordinary problem," she went on presently, "and yet it's so difficult. It's either now or never, you know, Reginald. I shall say good-by to the thirties before long."
"It is your problem," he said sadly, "not mine."
She held his fingers in hers.
"If only, when we were both so much younger," she sighed, "we had had a little more courage. But I was so ignorant, and there was so much else, too, to distract. I shall never forget our first few months of travel—Paris, the Riviera, Italy. I was impressionable, too, and I loved it all so—the colour and the beauty, the rich, warm stream of life, after that wretched village school. I was so aching to understand, and you were such a good tutor. You fed my brain wonderfully. Oh, I suppose I ought to be content!"
"And I," he murmured, "I, too, ought to be ready to creep into my own little shelter and be content with—memories."
"Ah, no!" she protested, laying her hand upon his. "If you feel like that, it is ended.—Now come, this is a gala day. You have come so far to see me. I am seriously flattered. You must be starved, too. Not another word until we have lunched."
At Trewly's their entrance produced a mild sensation. Their usual table was fortunately unoccupied. The manager himself welcomed them with many compliments. Marcia glanced around her a little listlessly.
"There is something rather mausoleum-like about this restaurant in the daytime," she declared. "Won't you take me somewhere else one day, Reginald?"
"Why not?" he answered. "It is for you to choose."
"There are some queer, foreign little places," she went on hastily. "The things to eat, perhaps, are not so good, but the people seem alive. There is an air here, isn't there, of faded splendour about the decorations and the people, too."
"I will make enquiries," the Marquis promised.
"Don't," she begged. "You must leave it to me. I will find somewhere. And now let us be serious, Reginald. Here we are come to rather a late crisis in our lives. Tell me, how much do I really mean to you? Am I just a habit, or have you really in the background memories and thoughts about me which you seldom express?"
He leaned across the table.
"I will confess," he said, "that I have been surprised, during the last few days, to discover how much you do mean to me, Marcia. Your quicker apprehension, perhaps, finds fault with me, rebels against the too great passivity of my appreciation. You have been the refuge of my life. Perhaps I have accepted too much and given too little. That is what may reasonably happen when there is a disparity in years and vitality as great as exists between us. What seemed to you to be habit, Marcia, is really peace. I have forgotten what I should always have remembered—that you are still young."
Her eyes glistened as she looked at him. A ray of sunshine which found its way through an overhead window was momentarily unkind. The lines under his eyes, the wrinkles in his face, the thinning of his hair, were all a little more apparent. Marcia was conscious of an unworthy, a hateful feeling, a sensation of which she was hideously ashamed. And yet, though her voice shook, there was still self-pity in her heart.
"I am so glad that you came," she said. "I am so glad that you have spoken to me like this. You need have no fear. Those other things were born of just a temperamental fancy. They will pass. Be to me just what you have been. I shall be satisfied."
A cloud passed over the sun. His face was once more in the shadow, and curiously enough her fancy saw him through strangely different eyes. Age seemed to pass, although something of the helpless wistfulness remained. It was the pleading of a boy, the eager hope of a child, of which she suddenly seemed conscious.
"Do you think that you can be happy—as things are, Marcia?" he asked. "Your friend, Mr. Borden, doesn't think so. He came down—he was just a little melodramatic, I think—hoping to incite me to a great sacrifice. I was to play the part of the self-denying hero. I was to give away the thing I loved, for its own sake. I had no fancy for the rôle, Marcia."
"And I should hate you in it, dear," she assured him. "Mr. James Borden will always be a dear friend, but he must learn what every one else in the world has had to learn--a lesson of self-denial. He will find some one else."
"I am not jealous of the man," the Marquis said. "I am jealous of just one thought that his coming may have brought into your brain—one instinct."
"Don't be," she begged. "It will go just as it came. It is part of a woman's nature, I suppose. Every now and then it tortures."
Luncheon was served excellently but without undue haste. They fell to discussing lighter topics.
"You will be interested to hear," he told her, "that my daughter Letitia is engaged to be married to Charles Grantham. I am quite expecting that by Christmas I shall be alone. I find Letitia a charming and dutiful companion," he went on, "but I must confess that I look forward to her marriage with some satisfaction. It has occurred to me that if it suited your work, we might travel for a time, or rather settle down—in Italy, if you prefer it. There is so much there to keep one always occupied. In Florence, for instance, one commences a new education every spring."
"I should love it," she answered, with an enthusiasm which still lacked something.
"A villa somewhere on the slopes of Fiesole," he continued, "with a garden, a real Italian garden, with fountains and statuary, and straight paths, and little strips of deep lawn, and a few cypress trees. And there must be a view of Florence. I think that you would work well there, Marcia. If things go as I expect, I thought that we might leave England about Christmas-time, and loiter a little on the Riviera till the season for the cold winds has passed. Browning wrote of the delights of an English spring, but he lived in Florence."
"There is so much there that I am longing to see again," she murmured.
"You shall see it all," he promised. "If you wish, you shall live with it. I do not know whether there is anything strange about me," he went on, after a moment's hesitation, "but I must confess that I find myself a little out of touch with modern English life. The atmosphere of my sister's house, for instance, invariably repels me. The last generation was amused by the efforts of those without just claims to penetrate into the circles of their social superiors. To-day the reverse seems to be the case. The men, and the women especially, of my order, seem to be perpetually struggling to imitate the manners and weaknesses of a very interesting but irresponsible world of Bohemia. I find myself with few friends, nowadays. The freedom and yet the isolation of foreign life, therefore, perhaps appeals to me all the more.
"But you would not care to leave Mandeleys, surely?"
"My dear Marcia," he said, "I am possessed, perhaps, of a peculiar temperament, but I can assure you that Mandeleys is spoiled for me so long as that—that ridiculous old man—you will forgive me—your father, sits at the end of his garden, invoking curses upon my head. To every one except myself, the humour of the situation is obvious. To me there is something else which I cannot explain. Whether it is a presentiment, a fear, an offence to my dignity, I cannot tell. I have spent all the spare money I have in the world trying to get that Vont cottage back again into the family estates, but I have failed. Really, your father might just as well have Mandeleys itself."
"You know that I went to see him?" she asked.
"I remember your telling me that you were going," he replied.
"My mission was a dismal failure," she confessed. "I felt as though I were talking to a stranger, and he looked as though he were speaking to a Jezebel. We stood in different worlds, and called to one another over the gulf in different languages."
"Perhaps," the Marquis sighed, "it is as well that he is your father. The other morning I passed down the fencing gallery and examined my father's collection of rifles. There was one there with a range of six hundred yards, which was supposed in those days to be marvellous, and some cartridges which fitted it. The window was open. You think, Marcia, that I am too placid for impulses, yet I can assure you that I slipped a cartridge into the magazine of that rifle, closed it, and knelt down before the open window. I held your father covered by the sight until I could have shrieked. Then I turned away and fired at a log of wood in the park. I found the bullet afterwards, half a foot deep in the centre of it."
She shivered a little.
"For heaven's sake, don't go near that fencing gallery again!" she begged.—"You see the time?"
He rose to his feet, and they passed down the restaurant together. Outside, the car was waiting.
"Will you think me very discourteous," he asked, "if I send you back in a taxicab? I shall be hard pushed, as it is, to reach home before my guests."
"Of course," she assented.
He stood for a moment after she had taken her place in the vehicle, with her hand in his.
"My visit," he whispered, "has made me very happy."
She looked at him through a mist of unexpected tears.
"Come to me soon," she begged a little abruptly. "I shall want you."
"Early next month," he promised, "or, if you send for me, before."
She seemed restless, indisposed to let him go. "I wish you weren't going away at all," she declared with unusual fervour. "I wish—Come back with me now, won't you? Do!"
For a moment he hesitated. He felt an extraordinary impulse to throw everything on one side and accept her invitation. The crisis passed, however, before he could yield. Marcia, with a little laugh, became her normal self.
"What an idiot I am!" she exclaimed good-humouredly. "Of course, you must get down to Mandeleys as quickly as you can. Good-by!"
She threw herself back in the corner of the taxicab and waved her farewells. The Marquis stood for a moment bareheaded upon the pavement. He watched the vehicle until it became lost in the stream of traffic. The impulse of a few moments ago was stronger than ever, linked now, too, with an intolerable sense of depression. It was with an extraordinary effort of will that he took his place in his own car and motioned the chauffeur to proceed.